In appliances for circulated air cooling, the cooling air cooled by a central evaporator and conveyed by a fan is conducted by a so-called multi-flow system into a storage chamber, be it the refrigerator or the freezer chamber, to be cooled in order to even up the temperature distribution in the storage chamber and to ensure adequate cooling even when there is a high degree of occupancy of articles to be cooled in the storage chamber.
It is often the case in such systems that a series of shelves are arranged both in the refrigerator as well as in the freezer compartment. Such shelves are typically made of glass or like solid material. The shelves are also of flat configuration and generally require that a user of the refrigerator be very organized in keeping the articles in a specifically arranged configuration for ease of access thereto.
A significant and often overlooked problem with such an arrangement of shelves is that because of the solid and non-permeable nature of the shelves, they generally impede the flow of cooling air throughout the compartment such that oftentimes, the flow is non-uniform leading to uneven cooling and possibly spoilage of articles therein. This is further complicated by the fact that it is often desirable to have the shelves occupy substantially an entire plane of the cooling compartment in which the shelf is supported to maximize storage space.
A further shortcoming of such shelves is that because they are generally formed as a flat supporting panel, it is often very easy to store articles thereon in a completely disorganized manner, often overfilling the shelf and complicating access to articles stored thereon.